Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A new study has just been published which claims a few degrees global warming will cause extreme population migrations in the tropics. But their model makes a rather questionable assumption about tropical climates.
Evidence increasingly suggests that as climate warms, some plant, animal, and human populations may move to preserve their environmental temperature. The distances they must travel to do this depends on how much cooler nearby surfaces temperatures are. Because large-scale atmospheric dynamics constrain surface temperatures to be nearly uniform near the equator, these displacements can grow to extreme distances in the tropics, even under relatively mild warming scenarios. Here we show that in order to preserve their annual mean temperatures, tropical populations would have to travel distances greater than 1000 km over less than a century if global mean temperature rises by 2 °C over the same period. The disproportionately rapid evacuation of the tropics under such a scenario would cause migrants to concentrate in tropical margins and the subtropics, where population densities would increase 300% or more. These results may have critical consequences for ecosystem and human wellbeing in tropical contexts where alternatives to geographic displacement are limited.
Read more: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep25697
The reasoning is, since the tropics has a very mild temperature gradient, if global warming causes tropical temperatures to rise slightly, people will have to migrate long distances to find their old temperature range.
From the study;
… Near the equator, the horizontal component of the Coriolis force becomes weak due to the small projection of the earth’s rotation vector on the local vertical. As a consequence tropical pressure and temperature gradients are much smaller than extratropical ones. Perusal of global maps of temperature on a surface of constant altitude show much larger variations at high latitudes than low, no matter what season, year, or time-averaging period is chosen. Because of this, the displacement distance L is necessarily larger in the tropics than in the extratropics, sometimes dramatically so. …
Read more: Same link as above
The flawed reasoning behind this assumption is people in the tropics are already on the brink of unsurvivable heat, that a small shift in average temperatures would push people over the edge. This is simply not true. In the tropics we have a technological innovation which allows us to mitigate the distress we would otherwise experience on hot days, called air conditioning. Or cheap ceiling fans, if you can’t afford air conditioning. When we have to go out in the blazing sun, we wear hats and dark glasses. Sometimes we even plant trees to provide more shade. On really hot days we sit in the swimming pool, drink beer and consume charred animal flesh.
People who choose to live in the tropics don’t mind when the thermometer soars above 90F – thats why we moved here, we enjoy that kind of weather.
Gobal net migration to warm places on the coast and to the tropics in the last 50-60 years is? And were places able to cope with these numbers?
Migration to the coast is totally about energy and technology. Better transport (cars, highways, bridges). River control, levees and drainage to prevent flooding and drain marshes. Deep foundation steel-framed buildings. Air conditioning. Electricity. Water management and desalination. Healthcare for retirees. Tech makes hot coastal places liveable for places like Dubai, Seychelles, Caribbean. This will only disappear if they pump up the cost of energy and make it too artificially expensive to live in hot places – so their solution will accelerate depopulation faster than even their worst doomster predictions.
Lived in Orlando Fl for a year without A/C working in the car. Rapidly got used to it. Laying by the pool at 90 F is nice! But the hot tub could have been hotter…
Unfortunately, as summer progresses the thunderstorms pick up in a natural negative feedback, and a really hot sunny afternoon harder to find. Phoenix, Az. is better for that. 110 F poolside is about ideal 🙂
Yes, warming really does cause lots of added migration. Folks flocking to Florida and Arizona like crazy….
I know a gentleman who moved from South Dakota to Phoenix. Stayed 2 years. Came back to SD due to the heat in Az. Evidently some zero degree days in SD are preferable to some 115 days in AZ.
Interesting….some how, a lot of us Canadian Snow birds must have it wrong, and we should be staying away from the tropics…/sarc….
I thought snow birds came down for the winter and returned when summer rolled around.
Avoid the coldest time of year up north, the hottest time of the year down south.
exactly E.M.
if global warming causes tropical temperatures to rise slightly…not a single person would notice
I live in the tropics….out on a rock…..
I live in Chicago, I’ve worked the house temperature down to 71 degrees.
As much as I like fresh air, I ain’t gonna let the predicted heat and humidity invade my environs, they are predicting 90+ degrees.
The thing is, She’ll never get it above 88 degrees, due to the water vapor from recent rains.
And on we go.
Will Bill have you friend move up to North Dakota, and experience some real winter. My wife is from South Dakota the laugh in my household is Joan though she knew what winter was like till she moved to Fargo. We nw live in Mesa full time, will not ever return to North Dakota, You know it so much work shoveling sun shine but you know someone has to do it.
EM,
“Yes, warming really does cause lots of added migration. Folks flocking to Florida and Arizona like crazy….”
That was my comment almost exactly! Where I live, we have a species of people we call “snowbirds”. They are bi-habitatual humans that migrate towards cooler temps when summer comes to their southern dwellings in very warm locations, and then migrate back towards that warm location when it gets cold and starts to snow in their northern dwelling! Census documents, as well as overwhelming evidence shows that as humans age, they tend to migrate TOWARDS heat and warmer locations, not away from them.
Ironically these “scientists” do not seem to understand the difference between a global mean temperature calculated with temperature anomalies and one calculated by measuring actual global temperatures. Or that when other scientists say “global mean temperatures” may rise 2C, that they don’t actually mean that everywhere on the planet will see a 2C increase, or that temps all day, everyday will be 2C higher. Or that temps in the “tropics” right this very minute are 2C HIGHER (or more) than a large portion of the planet, and yet people, plants, and animals are mysteriously STILL living comfortably there….as well as in colder, hotter, drier places just as happily?
Again today….the science….it burns!!
And I thought a large measure of projected warming was supposed to increased nigh time temperatures, which would not affect the daily high temperature at all.
I know it certainly was a big incentive for me to move here.
Average summer temp 28˚C
Average winter temp 19˚C!
So you suffer Climate Change twice a year?
My insides are torn asunder with envy.
Same over here in Seville. Today perfect temperature for a weak end on the beach 32C
ICK! How dull. (grins)
I loved Hawaii, it’s a freaking paradise so beautiful it’s hard to believe. I would LOVE to live there some day.
But I KNOW I would miss the snow, and the “inside” season with my fireplace and sweaters and books and seasonal baking. I’d miss the Spring where everything comes back to life and I get to literally watch my world wake up again. I’d miss the LACK of monster sized spiders, cockroaches and mosquitoes, not to mention fleas on my pets. I’d miss feeling freshly showered after walking outside during the summer, and the perfect quiet of nights without bugs constantly singing/buzzing in the trees. I’d miss the glorious fall colors, the crisp mornings, and the end of summer. I’d miss watching the Earth go to sleep again, slowly tucking her creatures and adornments into bed before the frosts return. I’d miss wearing jeans and boots and a jacket, snuggling under piles of down comforters, shoveling snow (believe it or not) and riding snow mobiles.
I’d miss having distinctive seasons, change, variety. I know there are seasons and changes in the tropics too, but I prefer Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer to things like “typhoon season” “hurricane season”, the “dry season” and “fire season”. etc. 🙂 And even if my world warms up by a whopping 2 C during my lifetime, I’ll still HAVE those seasons and be perfectly happy where I am thanks.
That’s a great comment Aphan!
🙂 thank you.
Aphan, some of he largest cockroaches I have seen are in Hawaii.
I know Leonard. That’s why moving to a tropical location would make me miss the “lack of” humongous bugs where I live now. 🙂
BORING!!!!!
So…. What region of the world was going to be the source of those 50 million by 2010?
Am I the only person on this board to notice editorial censoring (not on this board, in the internet world at large)? Am I really imagining that I make honest attempts to comment in media like the Washington Post only to have those comments simply disappear? Does this sound completely wrong? I am in no way suggesting this has happened to me on WUWT. Not AT ALL.
Because I’m starting to get a little curious about it. It’s one thing to be shouted down by a crew of trolls and sock puppets, that’s to be expected. But to spend 15, maybe 25 minutes composing a letter for publication only to have it drop into the memory hole before it even sees the light of day? That’s happened to me at least 10 times in the past week. Am I alone?
Just looking for a rock to hold onto. This is getting a bit scary.
Comment is Free on the Guardian frequently ‘disappears” comments which conflict with the paper’s ideology, even if they are purely factual. So much for “Facts are sacred”….
Yup, comment is ‘free’, but some comments are free-er than others..
It might be a technical glitch, but I agree some sites seem to be a bit activist, they seem to be under the delusion that editing the narrative improves their position. The reality of course is if you block opposing points of view it all gets a bit boring. One of the reasons WUWT is so popular is people have the freedom to express their views, providing they stay civil.
bartleby…
I’m sure you have, like most of us, been ‘in conversation’ with someone who is drunk at some point in your/our life.
How do they ‘argue’?
1. They are entirely immovable in their point of view
2. They pretend not to hear you if you attempt to push a point
3. If you still persist, the shout ever louder or attempt to change the subject – they throw up ‘chaff’
4. They will call on their friends, as a source of consensus or authority
5. They will defend their position with verbal or physical violence
6. They are NEVER responsible for, lets say, spilling your drink, crashing their own car or burning down their house. It was ALWAYS someone else’s fault
Does any or even all of that sound familiar in discussions with alarmists?
I’m not saying alarmists are all permanently drunk from alcohol intake but those are all symptoms of folks who are physically and especially mentally depressed. Not in the sense they are sad because they’ve maybe just lost their job or their wife has run off with the pizza boy but their thinking speed and ability is compromised by some depressant substance.
That substance is glucose, as derived from sugar and carbohydrate food.
And what does the drunkard always say if not ” Oh go one, have another drink, you’ll feel better then”
And what is the alarmist’s oft quoted cure for global warming if not, ‘eat less meat and go vegetarian’?
A very apt description of warmists , well done .
Never argue with a drunk. 🙂
Yes.
Peta,
I beg to differ on the drunks. I probably learned more liberal arts in the pub across the street from the engineering building than on the rest of the campus combined. A group of us would meet after labs several afternoons a week for beer and debate. After finishing the first pitcher (or two) some one would make a statement on current events, philosophy, or one of the social or physical sciences. That statement would define both the subject for the evening and his position on it. The rest would pick sides and the fun began. Usually, by the end of the evening we had thoroughly dissected that subject, at least as far as we knew it, maybe shouting but never degenerating to personal insults. The next day, especially if you were on the loosing side, you went to the library to do further research. A few weeks later you might find yourself on the opposite side of that same subject.
At least to me, it’s not whether the person across from you is drunk or sober. It depends on whether they both can and are willing to think. And, whether their opinions have been arrived at logically or emotionally. The problem with alarmists is that they are all emotional idiots and simpletons.
Joe, that must have been a long time ago. Those types of conflict would melt all the ‘Snowflakes’ attending college now.
Just remember to save the comment before sending, in case there are good bits you can recycle, such as references and links to papers.
No, you are not the only one, besides the fact that your comments do not even get through I see that more and more so called “news” and “transparent” sites do not even have comment sections any longer, BBC is one and so are many others. At least WUWT and other sites like BB and Fox still have comment sections. You are not alone noticing this trend.
Well, on that, I would reference Mr. Watt’s troubles with comments, which he expressed a scant few weeks ago. The This is True newsletter closed down its public forums years ago as well, citing it as a constant headache. The fact is that it is a major investment to keep the boards up and decent. Unless there’s a dedicated community based around it, there’s fairly little benefit to the company.
However, I would also suggest not to blame evil censors when technical incompetence of the web designer is a very strong possibility as well.
The elimination of comments began in ernest right after 9/11. I have been on the internet since it was first created (due to access to the WATS system, we have used these tools since the Vietnam War began!) and censorship has been rising first, steadily, then in the last 20 years, at full blast, there is very little ‘person to person’ chat anymore except on really stupid systems like Twitter, etc. that have very short attention spans and little real information.
Long text talking is dying rapidly. It will all be gone in the future, I fear, following this trajectory. By the way, I learned speed typing way back in 1969 so I could communicate rapidly and use many words easily.
Many South African news blogs have recently stopped comments, even though they were often the more entertaining and informative part! It can get difficult where politics are concerned, and the prevailing laws can count free speech as ‘racist’ or ‘hate speech’. Probably it gets too expensive for an advertising-paid blog to moderate EVERYTHING, with one eye over your shoulder for the fuzz. Recently, a woman posted a misguided comment on Twitter on racial lines, that just got her fined 100,000 Rand (about 6 months pay) in some sort of official ‘kangaroo court’.
besides the fact that your comments do not even get through I see that more and more so called “news” and “transparent” sites do not even have comment sections any longer
I think you’re right about that being even more frightening than occasional censorship. There used to be something called the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ in US mass media, the idea was opposing viewpoints to MSM op-ed pieces deserved equal (and free) time. In the US it was enforced by the FCC as a license requirement but they stopped enforcement in 1987 and I’m not sure why. After that the MSM just went hog wild with unsupported allegations and I pretty much stopped using it.
Instead I started using the internet for information in ’93 and hope returned in the form of the Usenet. All through the 90’s it seemed to really blossom and I had the idea we were doing having a profound effect on society and free speech. It’s really upset me to watch that die on the vine over the past 15 years. I keep looking for news aggregators that support free information exchange and unbiased (to the best of anyone’s ability) information but it’s disappearing fast. The changes, just over the past three years, have been huge.
I suppose there’s nothing to do about it. Maybe I’ll try going back to moderated Usenet groups. I’m not even sure the Usenet exists anymore.
….Am I the only person on this board to notice editorial censoring (not on this board, in the internet world at large)? Am I really imagining that I make honest attempts to comment in media like the Washington Post only to have those comments simply disappear?..
There is a move afoot amongst the Internet activists to have everything they hate defined as ‘hate speech’. Be thankful you have only been gagged this time. Soon, you will be arrested…
You are or course right. If the extreme of either side gain control the first amendment will suffer. I have to agree with Dr. Tim Ball when he said:
its pretty widespread on MSM sites
they have a word list..
an overactive one:-)
and then the googbots targeting anything( they decide)with govt “help” might be upsetting or make someone think.
search pages altered to be ever so PC
thats why msm is falling and Altnews sites are on the up.
Fortunately (I think) the literacy of those maintaining the “trigger” word list are likely to have the vocabulary of a paramecium, and an aversion to thesauruseses.
OT.. all reliable US temperature data , {USCRN, UAH (USA48,49), RSS (ContUS)} …
… show a NEGATIVE ANOMALY for May..
in order: -0.200, -0.54, -0.08, -0.384
deg C
Andy
You can use & deg ; C without the spaces to get °C
I’ve seen people putting on woolly jackets “because it’s getting chilly” when the temperature dropped to 30 C in the evening.We adapt very quickly.
24C is my cut off point…
Lower than that and it’s two pairs of thick socks, sweat pants and shirt..and something on my head
10°C is my cut off point where I won’t put the roof down on my convertible. Anything above that and I like driving with the roof down.
Try shoveling snow in a tee-shirt and shorts.
Mark, sounds like spring snow in the Rockies.
I stopped reading when I got to ‘Coriolis Force’. How any ‘scientist’ (and the reviewers for that matter) could refer to Coriolis as a ‘force’ rather than what it is, an effect is beyond me. My 1st semester undergrad Engineering Pysics Prof would come unglued if you referred to it as a ‘force’.
The Coriolis effect is weaker in the tropics.
Even before that:
‘Evidence increasingly suggests’
You know what follows won’t be science.
And, ‘that as climate warms,’ it’s just another “Given global warming, . . .” study.
yea, “…vertical… pressure and temperature gradients …”? These have always been … but uh … how does a couple of degrees … I mean every day there is a couple of degrees. I guess that the mean shifts, but ….
Forget it. This reads like high-school science papers where random paragraphs coppied from Wikipedia are pasted together.
Yabut Bill these aren’t engineers and they don’t talk like engineers. You’d also have a hard time getting them to understand that there’s no such thing as centrifugal force either and that they should all call it centripetal acceleration.
Used to be “Coriolis force” in textbooks, back in the day.
The physics guys would remind us that it was what they called a “virtual force”, not a true force. Of course, they would not shut up about it either.
That’s the way it was, back in the day.
Show a little respect for your elders, and your betters.
GET OFF MY LAWN!
I spent six months in the navy learning inertial navigation theory and equipment.
We learned it was the Coriolis Effect.
No such thing as coriolis (or centrifugal) force? The best takedown of that idea is this:
https://xkcd.com/123/
elaborated on here:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/123:_Centrifugal_Force
Well Done!
…The flawed reasoning behind this assumption is people in the tropics are already on the brink of unsurvivable heat, that a small shift in average temperatures would push people over the edge….
Of COURSE it is true! Haven’t you noticed the mass movement of all people of the world northwards at night, and southwards during the day?
You can’t have missed it. 7.4bn people moving 200 miles north and south each day MUST be visible…
So that’s what the whooshing noise I hear at nite is.
Yep! And that’s why there is high tide and low tide on the coasts! The movement of Earth’s inhabitants rocks the planet back and forth like see saw! Lucky for us, the people on one side are going North while the people on the other side are going South, which keeps the whole planet from “capsizing”.
Now when the magnetic poles shift, the people who used to run North, will have to run South, and vice versa. Right DG? 🙂
(I can’t believe I’m tying the word sarc here….but lately….you know…)
Both sides of the argument are flawed. Consider for example tropical Africa. If we use a climate reanalyzer such as ECMWF ERA interim and plot the temperature over the last 35 years we can see it has increased about 0.6 degrees C.
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/Reanalysis_monthly/tseries.php
That region doesn’t have people with air conditioning or who lay about in luxury. They do have a lot of disease, corrupt and incompetent governments, civil wars and even genocides. Population movements are caused by these factors and not because it’s getting a bit warmer. Over the long term these tropical areas can suffer if there’s drought. And since higher temperatures lead to higher humidity it should rain more on a region-wide basis.
The focus in these tropical regions with poor governance should be in helping them have more stable governments with sensible politics.
I think George, Hillary and Barack tried that in Iraq, Libya and Egypt.
Talk about mass migration.
Not working out so good, eh?
If we look at the history in Asia or in Africa, the migrations were associated with the change in water resources — like continued drought and thus drying of river or changing the course of river. Severe deficit rainfall makes the people to migrate to get water and pastures for animal.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
I and other designers specialising in CRD (climate-responsive design) up here in tropical north east Australia have always been aware of one “movement” in particular. This was the tendency for know-alls from down south, or from temperate locations elsewhere, to come here, and attempt to tell us all about this subject. The interesting thing was, they tended not to come in November to April, when it is usually stinking hot and humid, and there is a possibility of cyclones.
Looked at the source document – yep no evidence that these authors would have a clue what they are on about.
There is one interesting comment:
“The variation proposed is well within the normal diurnal range – and we don’t find hoards of people driving 200 miles south every day to work, then 200 miles north to sleep!” LOL
Right now the climate elite tell us that the arctic circle is warming fastest. That means if the globe warms an average value, the tropics would experience below-average warming.
Perhaps they should instead talk about how people will be able to move to higher latitudes now as they will be come more habitable. All that new construction is bound to displace grolar bears, and detonate the methane bomb … elderly, women and children hit the hardest.
Hudson Bay isn’t warm.
Bernie,
Right On! It is disingenuous to use AVERAGE GLOBAL warming to predict what will happen in the tropics. Clearly the warming in the tropics will be below-average!
Even a website like greenfacts.org says, “Increases in the tropics are not evident over the past few decades.” So if the tropics have not gotten warmer over the past few decades, when is it supposed to start getting warmer?
The article presumes changing boundaries of climate zones, but the data shows that isn’t happening, and especially not in the tropics.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/data-vs-models-4-climates-changing/
All they’ve done is to take the same bogus “climate refugee” argument and slapped a new name onto it: “extreme migration”. Same climate pig, different shade of lipstick. Meanwhile in the real world, we’re still waiting for “climate refugee” number 1. They can always hope, I guess. Maybe one will show up somewhere, and then there will be a flood of them. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
And naybe pigs will fly.
Does this mean the retired people living in Florida will start returning in droves to US northeastern cities when the average temperature in Florida rises from 80 F to 82 F? Does blind obedience to the AGW doctrine drive a person to stupidity?
Whenever I read these studies using words like migration or evacuation to describe a climate shift of hundreds of meters over hundreds of years you know the bias of the author. I can only imagine they see caravans of refugees pulling their carts across dusty roads, images similar to WWII.
“I can only imagine they see caravans of refugees pulling their carts across dusty roads, images similar to WWII.”
Only MUCH slower right? I mean, since it’s going to take 100 years for the full effect of the….whatever is supposed to be causing a particular migration….to occur, they only have to pull their carts 0.027kms per day in order to be 1000kms away from their current locations in 100 years! That’s like 89 feet per day. Totally doable. 🙂
From the study “rapid evacuation” need I say more? Maybe if you are a Sloth.
Something like this (hope the link works)
?w=840
when the average temperature in Florida rises from 80 F to 82 F
====================
82F is the minimum temperature human beings can survive without technology.
I was picturing more like thousands of poor families moving north pushing Walmart shopping carts.
Rather than migrate 1000s of km, you would just move a few km to the nearest hill, 300m higher above sea level. But of course this is all nonsense and everyone will stay put.
You an also plant a tree or put up some shade cloth. Hotter in the sun than in the shade…
if this was truly a problem you would see people moving backwards and forwards from Barbados and St. Lucia to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic in much the same way as Canadian move to Florida in the winter.
Don’t leave out the Canadians who relocate to Arizona in the winter.
Nor, to the Rio Grand valley of Texas
This is garbage, pure and simple. Humans adapt. Whoever wrote this didn’t graduate from kindergarten. Nature.com has sunk to a new low.
No, it’s the same low level they sunk to for the IPCC and leading up to the Climategate emails.
Still way down low, just adding more mud to the water.
We lived at sea level on the equator for almost 20 years. While I was walking around in shorts and t-shirt, sweat pouring off. the locals were walking around in long pants and jackets. If temperatures got down to 24C (75F) people started putting on gloves.
Our kids were born and grew up in the tropics. They find the 20C (68F) that is the “green” setting people now set their houses at is much too cold. When we were kids growing up in Canada the thermostat in every house was set at 72F (22C).
It was only after the Arab Oil Embargo that everyone was supposed to reduce their thermostats to save energy. Now it looks like there Paris Oil Embargo in progress. Eventually we are going to end up with thermostats set to 0C (32F) and millions of climate refugees heading for the tropics.
Watched Obama last night. He said the first thing he and Michelle were going to do after leaving office was to head for somewhere warm for a couple of weeks, because of how cold temperatures have been in Washington at Inauguration time.
How ironic. Obama tells us what a threat global warming is, then first thing out of office plans to head for somewhere to warm up.
Maybe ironic is the world. Moronic?
Maybe that wasn’t the “cold” he was referring to.
What no one thinks to ask is a very simple question. What is the minimum temperature a human being can survive without technology? No clothing, no fire, at what temperature do we start to die of exposure?
82F (28C). The same temperature as the tropical jungles. The same temperature the tropical jungles have maintained for millions of years, even during the depth of the ice age and the heights of the inter-glacials.
In contrast the average temperature of the earth, after all these years of global warming, the average temperature of the earth is:
60F (15C). In other words, if you were to take a very poor person living in the tropics and move them to a random location on the land surface of the earth, odds are they would die of exposure without additional resources to ward off the cold.
Interesting, ferdberple, thanks.
Yep – if its too hot you just take your clothes off, modesty permitting…
This study overlooks the IPCC’s theory, which stipulates that in the tropics, all of the warming will be aloft. Remember the mid-tropospheric hotspot?
Oh. More alarmist drivel for the echo chamber…..
Surely the Warming Models can at least tell us where the Girls Gone Wild will be next year? I’ve been waiting in vain at 45 deg. North for way too long!
Doesn’t make any sense. If the change was less than five degrees, no one would even notice.
Also, there’s no evidence for temperature-driven mass migrations of this kind during the MWP, RWP, etc. And they didn’t even have technology.
Only because during the warm periods governments could keep out the barbarians. Note the walls the Romans and Chinese built, for example. During cold cycles, the ability to police the borders collapses and barbarians pour in.
During warm cycles the barbarians have less interest in pouring in, as their own lands are quite habitable.
When it turns cold, the lands that the barbarians live in turn less habitable and out of necessity they start seeking new lands to roam about.
Interesting in light of the fact that according to NOAA in the last 40 years there has been NO global warming in the tropics according to the satellite record.
see: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/msu/time-series/tropics/lt/dec/ann
There are only two sites of the many I visit, that have comment sections I can read without going crazy. WUWT is one, and Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit is the other. Jo Nova’s blog is not horrible, but Judy Curry’s site has lots of high frequency dogmatists that always appear, always bring up the same crap, and make reading the comments repetitive, boring and frustrating. Just think of how this site would be if Seth and his detractors appeared and battled on every thread. I occasionally read RealClimate or DeSmog or Guardian comments, or particular Hufflepuff, NPR or Slate, too. But this is just to get a better understanding of what my political opponents are saying, to know their talking points. Commenters on those blogs give me the impression of being brainwashed cultists, generally speaking. Reading the Bore Hole comments, and seeing how reasonable and thought provoking they can be, and yet be censored out of the context in which they were made, gives a true sense of how oppressive and scared and stupid and ideological are the operators of RealClimate.
If you really want to understand how comment sections are going south, go peruse a political topic on Yahoo news. Some articles get twenty thousand comments with the collective wisdom near zero (this is based on my brief, non-scientific sample) and wherein reasonable, measured comments are buried amid the thunderous cacophony.
The trolls in some cases have effectively shut down the comments sections. Our buddy Seth is a classic example of an immature ego gone amok. The kind of persistence that causes some to wonder if he’s being paid to do it. I doubt it, he has nothing better to do.
One of Hilary’s Super PAC’s raise over a million dollars to pay people like Seth to troll social media against her critics.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-trolling-20160506-snap-htmlstory.html
This has been a tactic of the Left for sometime now.
The people commenting at the RealClimate (sic) website are scary. They really believe we are at the End of Times and are going to roast to death! Very sad. And they think that those of us who fear a looming Ice Age are ‘deniers’ who don’t believe in climate change.
And the Big Change is another Ice Age which we should fear greatly.
Still waiting to hear from the UN on my climate refugee status. I need money and a nice place in Hawaii. As rich as the UN is, I’m sure they can afford to send me and a few million other people looking to escape winter. Think of all the carbon it will save! We won’t be running the heaters in winter! It’s a win win!
Scene: The swim-up bar and poolside, Barbados.
Me: KER-SPLASH!
Roxy: EEEK! Who did that!
Me: Roxanne, My favorite barmaid in the whole West Indies.
Roxy: TonyL, You one crazy tourist, now I am soaking wet. You come in from Boston?
Me: Yes, it’s cold now, up there.
Roxy: I visited Boston, once. Stayed all winter.
Me: What did you think of the snow?
Roxy: I never seen snow before. You got lots and lots of snow.
Me: Next time you come up, you must visit.
Roxy: No, I’m good. I seen snow now, once was good.
Contrary to expectations, people who live down in the islands do not really seem that interested in moving to colder climates.
It used to be that -43 degrees kept out the riff-raff. It now appears they are adapting to colder climes
I just did a little research into paleoclimatology. During several of the “Hot House” eras of the distant past, the equator was still only “tropical”, the poles were usually “cool temperate”, occasionally “warm temperate”.
During “Hot House” eras, the tropical zone extends further north and south, and there are no “arctic” zones.
LarryD, you first mistake is you did a little research. To be a scientist today research is not required, only repeating the dogma allows you to be a “scientist” any research found that conflict with the dogma and God forbid you publish it, if you publish facts from research and those facts conflict from the dogma you will rapidity find yourself without a job. So why do any research at all just publish made up facts that agree with the dogma and you have a job for life.Larry you just don’t understand what required today to be a “scientist”‘
You have to study at the Chicken Little School Of Catastrophe first, then you can be a ‘scientist’.
This totally ignores the fact that non-tropical populations got established by migration of populations to cooler areas long before climate change became an issue. People are adaptable, and some are willing to migrate to climes with temperatures they are NOT accustomed to in order to gain other advantages.
Annual average humidity (especially the lack thereof) is a far stronger driver of population migration than temperature.
Compare these two tropical countries:
Singapore (daily mean temp 27°, mean annual rainfall ~2300 mm) has 7700 people per sq km.
Libya (daily mean temp 20.3°, mean annual rainfall ~59 mm) has 3.55 people per sq km.
And God forbid it, but think what a catastrofy it would be if the temperature became a bit lower. There would be no place to migrate to, so perhaps they will all die.
The collisions as the northern refugees meet the southern refugees at the equator, could kill millions.
The sub-tropics experience temperature swings and highs; the tropics are about 80° year-round. Climate change is a feature of high latitudes.
We denizens of the far north have yearly climate change that goes from way below freezing to above freezing and even sometimes, hot! A swing of 75 degrees or more!!! And plants and animals have adapted to this and thrive.
emsnews-the local weather where I live (Mountain West USA) changes by 50F in one day all the time! Everyone expects it, and we even joke about it “If you don’t like the weather, just wait 15 minutes”. And all people, animals and plants seem to be perfectly happy. Climate scientists should study us. Learn our ways. Except ewwww….not sure I want them coming here. Never mind. 🙂
A greater influence over temperature in the tropics (or anywhere) is altitude, not latitude. The most livable locations in the world are in the tropics at around 2000 m a.s.l. I lived on the Ethiopian Highlands for 12 months. Wow, what a climate – the best coffee in the world too. Within 3 hours drive one could be below s.l. in the East African Rift Valley. Now, that was hot! People lived there too. I could name many other locations but would suggest to Nth Americans that there should be equivalents in Mexico
The Kenyan Highlands is one of the great suppliers of cut flowers and fresh vegetables for Europe. If temps increased they would move up-slope, not latitude. Even 500 m makes a significant difference
Over and again I find that common sense and general knowledge is sadly lacking in many of the articles published here. So many researchers need to get off their backsides and go see the world. My own field, Earth Science, is described as a field discipline. Long may that continue
I thought the key thing was attitude. At least that’s what Jimmy Buffet taught me.
Michael,
You touch on something that doesn’t seem to get much attention. With the lapse rate being between about 1.5 deg C and 3.0 deg C per 1,000 ft, the claimed global temperature change of approximately 1.0 deg C in the last 100 years can be negated locally by an increase of a little over 400 feet of elevation. An implication of that, is that if the terminus of a glacier has receded upslope more than about that amount, then something other than average air temperatures are impacting the glaciers.
Clyde,
Is it a “female” glacier? We’d have to ask a female glacier scientist to find out. 🙂
Clyde – Yes, I would really like to know more about trends within glaciers on a global scale – not just those that alarmists find convenient to study and report on
The cause of mass population shifts is Catastrophic Anthropogenic Government Whoring observed in progressive wars, opportunistic regimes changes, social justice-inspired humanitarian disasters, and mass exodus to effect demographic change. As well as compensating for reactive parenthood, planned parenthood, and other dysfunctional orientations and behaviors.
+ a bizzillion.
“above 90F”
And here in the sane hemisphere we use the metric system and °C. 😉
One thing for sure: as climate warms, there’s an increase in demand for mai tais.
1sky1-
Wait a minute….you just uncovered another, almost perfect, correlation….maybe an increase in the consumption of mai tais is causing global warming! It could be that demand for mai tais lags the warming, but I suggest MUCH research is needed to establish that mai tais do not, in fact, precede….and thus cause….warming. 🙂
I’m ready to start the research but, isn’t the plural for mai tai mais tai.
Only when attorneys general drink them.
Right now, there’s a species gradient. The largest number of mammal species and lowest rate of extenction is in the tropics. Why should the results for humans be opposite to the results for all other mammal species?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24492316
“Overall, speciation rates are higher, and extinction rates lower, in the tropics than in temperate regions. The diversity of the eight most species-rich mammalian orders (covering 92% of all mammals) peaks in the tropics, …… Latitudinal patterns in diversification rates are strikingly consistent with these diversity patterns, with peaks in species richness associated with low extinction rates …”
Alan,
Let me respond for them-
“Well DUH dude! The reason there are more species and less extinction in the tropics is because the temperatures don’t fluctuate much. It’s like they are completely static, so nothing that lives there ever has to adjust or adapt to anything. If the temperatures rise like even 1 C, even if it’s over the course of 100 years, all those fragile, weak, completely unsuspecting species (and people) will be forced to migrate or die!”
Hey, maybe that’s what happened to the Mayans! The temps rose 2 C and they all had to migrate! They just moved a little more North…built a city….waited for global warming to reach them again….abandoned the place…moved a little more North…built a city…:) Canadians are modern day Mayans!
Maybe the LIA started to destroy the Mayans and white men showed up to finish them off.
Imagine! Air conditioning in the tropics! What will they think of next?
“In the tropics we have a technological innovation which allows us to mitigate the distress we would otherwise experience on hot days, called air conditioning/”
Yes, but unfortunately in the tropics, like everywhere else, electricity is not free. Someone in the Philippines making $250/month is not going to be able to afford a $1000 AC unit, nor the $50-75/month to run it. Fans are fine at up to 33, but don’t do a lot of good at 37. Blowing 37 degree air past your skin at 37 doesn’t help at all. .
“People who choose to live in the tropics don’t mind when the thermometer soars above 90F – thats why we moved here, we enjoy that kind of weather.”
98% of the people living in the tropics didn’t “choose” to live there, they were born there.
The Philippines tend to use big ceiling fans, or small desk fans. Air conditioners are for non natives who don’t like hot weather. When I went for a day trip to the top of Taal Volcano, my guide was freezing, because it was only 26c / 80F.
“Global Warming will Cause Extreme Tropical Population Shifts,” that is 100% accurate. The next ice age will almost certainly result in the US taking over Mexico as people flee the ice for the warm beaches of Mexico. The next ice age will almost certainly trigger a global war. What is the political left preparing for? The exact opposite.
Really? And all this time I thought people moved for economic reasons or for retirement. Now I find out people move because average temperature rises by 2 degrees. Of course people who live in air-conditioned homes will likely need to be told that they should to move .
Widespread use of air conditioning has lowered our ability to accommodate heat. Before air conditioning, there was the shore or a trip to the White Mountains in New Hampshire in July.